Raisin is the littlest cow in the herd and is nuzzled and cooed over by the other cows. She likes the color brown and movies and especially dislikes change. But change always comes. Her mother has another little cow, a little brother for Raisin, and Raisin does not like her little brother or that her little brother is now the one being cooed over and nuzzled and that the attention that he is garnering means that no one but Raisin remembers movie night, so no one is there to help her see over the fence. She helps herself, but the day keeps getting worse. There’s rain. There’s thunder. The movie is canceled, and her brother is wailing almost as loud as the thunder. Raisin and her brother bond over their mutual dislike of thunder and over his brown eyes, which are her favorite color. She makes him giggle by dripping on him then by showering him with a shaking her coat, calming him when no one else can do. I imagine this book would be helpful for a child dealing with jealousy of the attention given to a newborn sibling, to see their feelings validated, reflected. With humor snuck into the text and illustrations, the message, the promise that a new sibling can be a friend and not a reason to run away to Jupiter nevertheless seemed a little too prominent, a little heavy-handed. I’m not sure what made the message seem so heavy-handed, since Busch never stated her intention outright. Perhaps it’s simply that I’m not Busch’s target audience.

Gennifer Choldenko is probably best known for her middle-grade historical fiction novels, most notably perhaps her series that begins with Al Capone Does My Shirts. This picture book is about an active, sports-involved boy who is bolder in the presence of his toy dinosaur—the dinosaur very wonderfully illustrated by Santat, his translucent image truly imposing. Overall I liked the writing, but I disliked that the husband brushes off his wife by saying they are going out for “guy stuff” as the book nears its end. As a woman I felt like I was being cut out of the story. It was something I didn’t and don’t expect from another woman—though I know we can be as guilty of sexism against women as men can be. This seems particularly jarring after the mother has been so physically present throughout the book and the boy’s father so obviously absent, hearing about his activities after the fact from the mom. That too is why, though, the dad’s compassion, his acceptance of his son’s coping mechanism is so particularly touching. The lesson could have been far more heavy-handed than it is. The father could have chosen to be the “adult” and deny the boy’s need for his dinosaur. I’m glad that he did not, even as I’m glad that he does state baldly that it’s okay to be scared and that he too gets scared sometimes. Normalizing fear and normalizing coping mechanisms for fear are needed. Normalizing sexism and strict adherence to gender roles and stereotypes are some things that I would like to see less.

***

Interactive Books

Don’t Touch This Book! by Bill Cotter. Jabberwocky-Sourcebooks, 2016.

I had the great pleasure of having this book read to me during one of my twice-weekly story times. It’s a wonderfully interactive book—and I like it so much more than the previous book by Cotter, Don’t Touch the Button!Don’t Touch the Button! and Hervé Tullet’s books too ask the reader to interact with the page of the book. Don’t Touch This Book! begins that way. Larry (the protagonist) tells the reader not to touch the book, then allows the reader to use just one finger, then to use all their fingers when he appreciates the reaction of the book to the reader’s action. Quickly though this book asks the reader to do all manner of ridiculous things that many readers at story times ask of their listeners anyways that are more physical than merely pressing a particular spot on a page or shaking the book: flap your arms like the wings of a flying bird, roar like a dinosaur, spin around…. The readers’ acts precipitate the responses of the book. Roaring like a dinosaur causes a T-rex to appear on the following page. Flapping your arms causes the monster protagonist to sprout wings to be able to escape the T-rex. This will almost certainly join the repertoire of story time books that I keep in mind when I need to wear out my too rowdy crowd. It may supersede some of the others. I’m very glad my story time visitor chose this book to read to me.

This book is a simple dance-along book featuring dinosaurs. Each dinosaur—named primarily by species—does a particular step of a dance. T-rex goes STOMP STOMP STOMP, The red Brontosaurus goes QUIVERY QUAKE. There’s a little dinosaur no one can identify who both cha-chas and goes DEEDLY DEE. I appreciate that there is an animal that no one can identify, especially in what could be considered a primer; too infrequently are toddlers told that it’s okay not to know. Of course all of the text rhymes. I was reminded of Van Fleet’s recent book Dance, which sets itself apart with its pull tabs, though I think that I prefer the text here. There’s more sense in this that the reader is a caller than there is in Tony Mitton’s Dinosaurumpus! but not as much as can be found in Boynton’s better-known Barnyard Dance; Barnyard Dance has very much a square dance rhythm to it. For its more imaginative and open-ended dance moves, I may like this one even better than Barnyard Dance. Plus, dinosaur primers are harder to find than a barnyard primers, and this book is able to do more with color than does Barnyard Dance.

****

Retellings

We Are the Dinosaurs by Laurie Berkner and illustrated by Ben Clanton. Simon & Schuster 2017. Intended audience: Ages 4-8.

This book takes the text of Laurie Berkner’s song and adds more of a story to it with its illustrations and asides. I read the story before finding the song. The song talks about dinosaurs broadly. The picture book narrows the story a group of friends—different types of dinosaurs—who adventure towards the top of a volcano—and run away from the rumbling mountain and back to their parents to revel in their bravery and adventure. Ben Clanton’s bright, cartoony dinosaurs are memorable but I didn’t discern much personality from any of the dinosaurs, which was a bit disappointing.

Drew Daywalt gained his fame with The Day the Crayons Quit and The Day the Crayons Came Home, both done in conjunction with Oliver Jeffers. His latest book continues to focus on art supplies and children’s play. He invents a story behind the popular Rock, Paper, Scissors game. There are three great warriors from three different kingdoms around a home. Each has fought the warriors that exist in their own kingdoms, and none are satisfied with their competition or their victories. They each go on a quest for fulfillment and a meaningful victory—and discover joy in fighting one another. This story wasn’t beloved, it didn’t seem, of my audience for story time (in the interest of full-disclosure, my audience was three girls, and they were older, maybe 6-9; I suspect this book would go over better with the boys who come in looking for books on WWE and the ones who build guns out of Legos at our events; the whole plot of the book is battles and fighting and the dialogue is primarily traded boasts of one’s own prowess and colorful insults). I perhaps could have hammed up the text a little more than I did, but I did ham it up some. It’s hard not to do so when I’m provided lines like

and pages like

Paper became my favorite warrior for his bemused reactions to the aggressions of the other two in their first three-way battle and his frightful “fighting words”: “Hi there.” I greatly enjoyed that Daywalt chose to make Scissors a master swordswoman with painted-red lips. This could easily and in another decade likely would have been a book without any female representation. I enjoyed the dinosaur-shaped chicken nuggets particularly too. What a nod to children’s play. But ultimately that I enjoyed it more than girls in the target age-range makes me like the book less.

I thought because this was marketed (at least by Barnes & Noble) with all of the books and merchandise for the new live-action Disney remake of its animated film by the same name that this story would follow the Disney story, but instead Rylant stayed nearer the Perrault version of the story and devoid of any talking furniture. Beauty (not Belle) is the youngest of three sisters and her father is a merchant whose fortune is lost at sea. Her older sisters when the father’s ships are recovered want emerald necklaces, but Beauty wants only a rose. On the way back to home from port, the father is caught in a storm and shelters in a castle that seems deserted except that a feast is laid out for him. On his way from the castle, he spots a rose in the garden and remembers his youngest’s wish. As payment for the rose, the Beast, master of the castle, demands the father’s enslavement but allows him to return first to his family to say goodbye. Beauty demands to go to the Beast in her father’s stead. The Beast gives Beauty endless days of leisure, fine clothes, wonderful food. He reads poetry to her by the fire at night. And every day he asks if she is happy. One day he asks her to marry him, and she refuses. The Beast accepts her answer. She returns to her father to care for him in illness, then returns when she dreams that the Beast is dying. Her realization that she loved the Beast restores him to his human form: a man with darker skin than Belle’s.

Meg Park, who I’ve admired from a distance for some time for her softness, bright, jewel-like colors, and expressive characters, makes nods to the Disney cartoon in her illustrations: The Beast has the same basic shape, though he is perhaps more wolfish, Beauty’s design is close to Belle’s, though her hair is more auburn and her outfit more seafoam green than sky blue. Beauty’s horse is a palomino but not a Belgian Draft. In these ways and more she deliberately strays from the Disney retelling but harkens to it enough to highlight that both stories use Perrault as the basis for their tale.

I really enjoyed introducing young enthusiasts to a retelling nearer the Disney version.

*****

These reviews are not endorsed by any of the authors or publishers or anyone else involved in the making of these books. They are independent, honest reviews by a reader.

I’ve reviewed Les Petits Fairytales on this blog before, always positively. This latest will join those ranks. Les Petits Fairytales seek to bring the classic stories down to a toddler level, taking on the style of a primer while still maintaining a story, which is something few primers bother to do. Lake’s illustrations help to offer a cohesive plot that this story even lacks in some tellings for older audiences, making the woodsman obviously a witness to the girl’s entry into the house (though one wonders why the woodsman peeks through the window at girl and “grandma”; perhaps his angle just happened to be right to glance up at them through the window, but that seems unlikely). This more than the other Les Petits Fairytales shies from the Grimm version. There is no explanation of why Grandma is not in her bed, and the wolf is merely stripped of Grandma’s clothes, her clothes returned to her, and the wolf sent slinking from the house. Personally, I can understand the desire to spare children the bloody death of a wolf on the edge of a woodsman’s ax, and I can understand not having Grandma ingested, but I would have hoped that Lake might have found a way to subtly imply these ideas. Perhaps the word “rescue” stumped him. The only images that I can concoct for “rescue” that level with Grimm’s original details is a woodsman raising his ax and looking menacing or the wolf split and Grandma rising from its stomach, and neither, but particularly the first, is an image to give children for “rescue.” Since I too am struggling, I think that you get a buy for backing out of this more gruesome ending, Mr. Lake. Still, barring the difficulties of “rescue,” I’d have liked to see Red in wolf’s fur cape by the end.

This book reminds me a tiny bit of Seuss’ one fish, two fish, red fish, blue fish rhyme; “Dinosaurs happy and dinosaurs sad. Dinosaurs good and dinosaurs bad. Dinosaurs big and dinosaurs tiny. Dinosaurs smooth, and dinosaurs spiny.” This is an opposites book with dinosaurs done in Boynton’s classically adorable watercolor illustrations and with her moments of humors, with dinosaurs crammed in an elevator and dinosaurs singing a dinosaur song with the text broken up and printed below musical notes as if it were a from a songbook. The book breaks the fourth wall by having the dinosaurs gather at the end to say goodbye to the reader. Definitely more fun than the average opposites primer.

When did the message of Easter become one of helping others? This isn’t the only Easter-themed book I read to suggest so (so does Deborah Underwood’s Here Comes the Easter Cat). So that quibble aside and trying to force upon myself a secular idea of Easter, I suppose I cannot fault the idea of a holiday that reminds us to help others. Pete the Cat has become a well beloved figure. Dean and Dean make helping into a game for Pete, and Pete enjoys the game. With stickers and punch out cards, this might have more merit an activity book than a storybook.

Erin Stead’s illustrations! The soft wood block and colored pencil illustrations are beautiful, and she so clearly captures my view of late winter. This is a book that I needed towards the end of the winter and beginning of spring to remind me that green was coming after all of the brown. The story is relatively simple, one of planting and waiting for a garden and waiting for spring, but the simplicity of the text complements the soft illustrations, which are highly detailed, telling a great deal of story without text, and that simplicity is wonderfully poetic. This book is really fantastically well crafted. This would be an interesting book to read as a color lesson too, though I imagine most kids, by the time they want to read a book like this one, already know their colors, and rather it would be better paired with lessons on patience and plant biology and life cycle.

I’m going to go ahead and quibble with the listed intended audience here. This is a book I think that will appeal far more to parents than it will to children. This book compares a baby to a very particular CEO, and these are references that are likely to fly over the heads of children but make parents laugh at their poignant truth. Some of the vocabulary in this text is probably beyond most children too. The patterns and colors in this book along with the characters’ expressions really make the illustrations charming.

***

If You Give a Mouse a Cookie by Laura Joffe Numeroff, illustrated by Felicia Bond. Balzer + Bray-HarperCollins, 2010. First published 1985. Intended audience: Ages 4-8.

This book has become a classic and the hub of many spinoffs. I do like the cyclical story pattern. The little mouse does pay for his cookie and milk by doing all of the chores, but this poor kid had no idea what he was getting into when he offered to share his snack. I notice he’s napping himself by the second cookie, but he never does complain about sharing or helping the mouse. The boy here is really like the parent in a parent-child relationship where the mouse is the child. It doesn’t feel like a friendship particularly, and I don’t think that it should be lauded as friendship, though potentially as an example of selfless love. This can be a fun guessing book for kids. This is a book I would rate very differently depending upon how it’s being introduced.

Most of this month’s picture books came into my hands for one story hour or another that I was expected to lead.

The Elf on the Shelf by Carol V. Aebersold and Chanda A. Bell. Illustrated by Coë Steinwart. CCA and B, 2007.

Let’s start with a little too early yet Christmas spirit. This was a required book to be read for a particular story hour. I found out about The Elf on the Shelf tradition last year when I joined the retail world for the holiday season. I had never actually read the book, but the concept to me is more creepy than not. The elf watches children during the holiday season and reports their deeds nightly to Santa. The elf is known to leave the house because he is found in a different location or position each morning. Some parents seem to use the elf as another pair of eyes to watch the children for good and behavior, and some parents have reported that the elf being in the house does affect the children’s behavior. Some use the elf as a hide-and-seek game. The book itself explains the game and the idea to kids in a rhyming fashion. The writing itself I found honestly mediocre, but was pleasantly surprised by the rhyme. It’s a quick read, and the children seemed engaged, though our turnout was small. Half of the listeners were above the intended age for the reading or the book and while they were engaged they also poked some fun at the holes in the concept. Parents should be warned that the elf does ask good boys and girls to say their prayers in case there are any who might find that offensive, though this book otherwise stays within the now secular traditions of Christmas.

**1/2

Barnyard Dance Lap Book by Sandra Boynton. Workman, 2011.

Sandra Boynton is extremely popular, and though I’ve read only a few of her books, I’ve been pleased with all of them. This classic of hers seemed a safe bet for a story hour, and it was a big hit. The kids had been surprisingly riled by a reading of Mo Willems I’m a Frog! (see below), and at this point I went with it, and asked the audience to just join me in dancing, though I had surprisingly little audience participation for this one. The book aloud actually reads like a square dance call. It was a very quick read. Too quick maybe, I wanted to flip it over and start again, and see if I couldn’t coax some of the kids to do-si-do with me. But then, how does one, in an average setting for a read aloud or read alone “bow to the horse” or “stand with the donkey”?

****

Don’t Push the Button by Bill Cotter. Jabberwocky-Sourcebooks, 2013.

Like Hervé Tullet’s Press Here, the book shows a button, gives instructions, and demands interaction because the text implies that the illustration on the next page has been influenced by the actions done to the button on the previous page. In retrospect, for the larger group that I had, this was not the story hour book to choose, because when, for example, in Don’t Push the Button, it says to press the button twice, having an audience of ten, none of whom wanted to be left out or passed over, the button was pushed really twenty times before its change was effected. It was, though, a fun read aloud book and enjoyable to interact with and would be great for one-on-one read alouds (bedtime stories). Structurally, I prefer Don’t Push the Button over Press Here because Don’t Push the Button gives readers a character to follow and with whom to sympathize. Because the button affects him and not just the page, it seems more of a problem when unlikely things happen because the button is pressed. In Don’t Push the Button, however, the effects of pushing the button are consequences of rule breaking where in Press Here the effects are caused by following instructions. Readers of Don’t Push the Button are following the instructions of the monstrous protagonist, but it’s more like giving in to peer pressure than following directions—and I suppose that is a demerit in the pro/con battle between the two. Regardless of which is better composed, all these poor books will go to an early grave from being prodded and shaken….

***1/2

The Meaning of Life by Bradley Trevor Greive. Andrews McMeel, 2002.

Whoops. This one’s not for kids. But it is a picture book. Barnes & Noble classifies it as a “gift book,” but it is still by technical definition a picture book, a book with pictures that enhance the text but are not necessarily integral to the text (versus a picture storybook in which the pictures are integral. I consider that a subgenre of picture books, and many of the books in these roundups headed as “picture books” are actually “picture storybooks” (practically anything by Mo Willems, for example.)) Like all Bradley Trevor Greive books, The Meaning of Life features philosophical ponderings with a quirky, adult humor, topped with black-and-white photographs of animals. This book asks a lot of questions about human existence and to the readers directly. It suggests that the love of life is where our focus should be, and asks readers to think about what they are truly passionate about, and encourages them to chase that. His are, again, books that I enjoy giving out as gifts. They are enjoyable by most personalities, always fun, almost always leave me with a smile on my face, and good to share.

I thought this would be a Thanksgiving themed book. It’s promotionally shelved as a Thanksgiving book. It is not. It is about turkeys taking a day trip to a ski resort in Maine. The turkeys amuse themselves and partake of the provided entertainment on the train then revel in winter sports and activities once they arrive in Maine. It was a fun read aloud because it was very musically written with a solid rhyme scheme—up until the end when the rhyme scheme breaks, signaling the coming end of the book, a clever device. The illustrations are colorful and clever with a few puns to amuse the adults (Fowl Play). I puzzle how a train can travel from Fort Wayne (presumably Indiana?) to Maine in a day and back. If I were reading the book as an editor, I’d call a logic foul, but I understand not having questioned it for the sake of the rhymes, and because the intended audience is not likely to do so.

Candice Ransom is a professor at my alma mater, so yes, I’m likely to be a bit biased. Hello, Virginia—and I would guess all the Hello, America! books—reads a great deal like one of the Good Night Our World series. Which series began first I cannot say. I read Good Night Connecticut before Hello, Virginia! thinking from its title that it would be a Goodnight Moon parody, and so it is Ransom’s book that reminds me of Vrba’s rather than the other way around. The plot of neither is thrilling. The plots essentially say hello or goodnight to various sights around each state. Neither series gives much information about the sights so I would not use either as a teaching tool really. The books may serve to remind adults about the things that they remember and miss about a state. I can see a young child exclaiming “We were there!” when a familiar, particular location is illustrated (for example not over the stone walls of Connecticut, but perhaps over the Mystic Aquarium). Overall, I cannot rate either book highly.

I do appreciate the Hello, America! series’ proper use of grammar in its titles.

This Elephant and Piggie book was a book that I did not expect to be interactive, but the children in my story hour disagreed. Piggie was pretending to be a frog, and they all wanted to pretend to be frogs too, ribbeting and hopping around the stage. I don’t know that I’d ever before read a Mo Willems book aloud. I was inserting dialogue tags now and again, but it was also impossible to read without at least differentiating the two characters by inflection. This was a good lesson: one about pretending, that you can pretend, that we can use our imagination, that even adults pretend. Now of course, you could take the negative view that learning to pretend to be something that you’re not is a bad thing (teens+, see the movie Easy A), but you can also pretend to be unafraid, pretend to be a parent to a doll to learn empathy and responsibility, or pretend to be a frog. I love Mo Willems’ humor, I’ve said before, I love the strength of his characters, and I love the twist that he puts into the end of this book.

I was really enjoying this touch-and-feel book until I got to the last page where I was thrown out of the illusion by Noodle liking to roar. Pandas do not to my knowledge roar; humans (represented that the anthropomorphized panda here) roar in imitation of other animals only, and so what had been a message of loving animals was degraded, Noodle’s love suddenly seeming a mockery—though in retrospect I recognize that this reaction of mine seems a little irrational.

***

Birthday Monsters! by Sandra Boynton. Workman, 1993.

This book is probably primarily meant to be a once-a-year read or an “I don’t know what to get” birthday present for a young child, but Boynton writes amusing, rhyming prose, and there is a message about selflessness if you care to look for it. The birthday monsters show up (too) early on the young hippo’s birthday, and they seem to be bent on making his birthday a great celebration, but the birthday monsters ruin the celebration with their greed and selfishness. They leave, but return to tidy their mess so that the young hippo’s birthday ends on a high note with his house clean and his birthday things returned to him.

I very much enjoyed the original Llama Llama Red Pajamas (I gave it 4 stars on Goodreads), but as important as this newest book in the series is for classrooms and indeed for all children who may encounter bullies (which is all children), I felt Dewdney’s style did not lend itself well to the subject matter, being simplistic and rhyming and fun, while the subject matter was one that is not fun at all. Gilroy Goat disrupts the classroom and the playground by laughing at and ridiculing Llama and his friends. His bullying escalates to playground violence. Llama first stands up to Gilroy but when this fails to curb his behavior, Llama quickly tells his teacher, who puts Gilroy in time-out. Gilroy returns, the teacher asks if he can be a friend, and Llama extends Gilroy one of the dolls that Gilroy had earlier ridiculed, which Gilroy accepts, playing nicely and participating in classroom activities thenceforth. Gilroy and Llama part at the end of the day as unlikely friends. Gilroy Goat perhaps learns his lesson a little too easily, but it is I suppose good to give young children hope that bullies can change (I believe that they can if I believe it is a harder thing for them to learn to curb such instincts than it is for Gilroy), and good to give children an example of how to go about dealing with bullies. On a side note, Nelly Gnu is a returning character, I do believe, but I am glad to see Dewdney advocating friendship with the opposite gender.

***1/2

Good Morning, Good Night!: A Touch & Feel Bedtime Book by Teresa Imperato. Piggy Toes, 2004.

I was pleasantly surprised by this book. Each set of touch-and-feel pages shows the day of a particular baby animal, first upon rising, then, opening the flap, upon sleeping, with each animal sleeping beside a parent. The story is told in rhyme and ends with the day of a toddler.

****

The Way I Act by Steve Metzger, illustrated by Janan Cain. Parenting, 2010.

Barnes & Noble classifies this as a “growing-up” book. It’s a message book rather than being plot-driven, meant to both teach and reinforce laudable qualities in a child and also to build that elusive self-esteem. I was not overly thrilled with this book, first because I don’t necessarily like the implied opposite idea that a child is somehow worth less when they do not exhibit these listed traits, some of which are less attainable or teachable than others—or so it seems to me, though I’m no parent—and also because the language and style did not seem to quite suit the illustrations, which while colorful were not particularly memorable.

*1/2

An Elephant and Piggie Book: Can I Play Too? by Mo Willems. Disney-Hyperion, 2010.

Elephant Gerald and Piggie decide to play catch. A young snake asks if he too can play. They try to include the snake, but the snake is unable to join them because he does not have arms. The snake is ready to give up, but Piggie will not. The friends find a new way to play catch so that they can include the armless snake. This is a book that encourages the inclusion of new friends, different friends, and shows readers that there are sometimes unconventional ways to solve a problem and be sure that everyone has fun. All these beautiful messages are of course delivered with Willems humorous dialogue and illustration style, which I love, and his keen insight into the world of children.

****

These reviews are not endorsed by any of the authors or publishers or anyone else involved in the making of these books. They are independent, honest reviews by a reader.

This June I read a lot of picture and board books and little else. I seem to have a harder time reviewing in depth such books, but I don’t want to utterly ignore them either, so I’ve opted for a monthly roundup of such books, each with its own brief review, starting now. I want to mention that the idea owes some to Rick Riordan, who posts monthly brief reviews of books that he’s read.

I built this book up too much in my mind and didn’t realize it was a number primer/counting book. This book counts 1 English village, 2 rich gentlemen, 3 houses, 4 marriage proposals, 5 sisters… up to 10 thousand pounds a year! Round about the middle—maybe it was by 6—the numbered objects became more nonsensical—horses and soldiers—unless there were actually only that many horses and soldiers mentioned in the books (which I find unlikely), then it’s rather brilliant. I expected Pride & Prejudice to be more like the Les Petits Fairytales, the illustrations for which I find more appealing, softer, more childish, and more complete. Some counting books are masked in a plot, but this one, while it might use a plot as its basis, cannot claim to tell the story coherently through its pages. I have a difficult time with stories without a plot—even when I know that plot is not the point.

I’ve been reading a lot of books in this series because they are quick and I can read them while I walk them back to their assigned shelf. I have read Cinderella, Snow White, and Rapunzel besides. These are board books, meant to be the earliest introductions to the fairy tales. These are the fairy tales reduced to their simplest ideas, nouns attached to illustrations, simple and complete illustrations, not like those that are attached to Eric Carle’s Favorite Words books. Belle et al.’s books seem to invite its own retelling by a child in time, for which I’d laud it. They cannot really be read aloud—or would be dull and extremely short to read aloud. These are books to give to young readers or would-be readers, essentially a set of flashcards in board book form attempting to tell a tale because of their arrangement.

***

Are You a Cow? by Sandra Boynton. Little Simon-Simon & Schuster, 2013.

A simple story in which the characters of Boyton’s books ask the reader if he or she is a cow, a dog, a duck, a frog, etc. It ends with the affirmation, “You are YOU,” sure to get a giggle out of most young children, whom I’m sure will take it as a responsive, interactive book, sure to mean a little more to readers who return to it as more aware children, teens, or adults.

****

I Want My Hat Back by Jon Klassen. Candlewick, 2011.

The illustrations say so much that the words do not. The bear searches for his hat, asks a number of creatures whom he meets about his hat, always politely, always thanking them for their denial. Young readers might spot the hat in the pages, might guess before the bear that the wearer’s fierce denial should be taken as an affirmative. The bear gets the last laugh, squashing the thief and winning back his hat. It’s a much darker book than I expected.

****

What Makes a Rainbow: A Magic Ribbon Book by Betty Ann Schwartz and illustrated by Dona Turner. Piggy Toes, 2003. First published 2000.

Magic ribbon is right! If I at 23 am marveling over it, I can only imagine the wonder in the face of a child of the appropriate age. This is meant for the very young, a concept book to teach colors, and given a loose plot to string the colors together—and what better way to string the colors together than in a rainbow? The little rabbit asks his mother “what makes a rainbow?” and she sends him across the forest to query his friends, each of whom responds with a color needed to make up a rainbow that also happens to be their primary color. The pages are bright. The text is nothing stellar but neither is it entirely forgettable. With the turn of each page, the appropriate color is added via a ribbon to the rainbow growing at the top of the pages over the gutter.

***

Bluebird by Bob Staake. Schwartz & Wade, 2013.

This is a powerful book. I was left staring at it in my hands after I was done. Bluebird is a wordless picture with lessons in moving past grief after a loss and death, anti-bullying, and true friendship and love. A young boy befriends a bluebird that follows him on his way home from school through the city, even into a dark and twisted forest where they meet several bullies who throw sticks at the boy and bird. One stick catches the bird and kills it in the air. The bullies and the boy are appalled. The bullies run away and the boy is left to mourn his dead friend. Then they are descended upon by a flock of brightly colored birds that lift boy and bird into the sky where the bluebird undergoes some kind of resurrection and flies away. I’m not entirely sure what Staake meant the ending to mean. While the resurrection of the bird and the soaring boy give hope to children dealing with loss, I’m not sure that the ending doesn’t also give unrealistic expectations—of birds, of death, maybe even of friends, though I count myself extremely fortunate in my friends. Yet, I cannot say that the nebulous and potentially overreaching ending much diminishes the power of the book.

****1/2

That Is Not a Good Idea! by Mo Willems. Balzer + Bray-HarperCollins, 2013.

Willems’ retells Beatrix Potter’s Jemima Puddle-Duck, itself arguably of the Red Riding Hood tale type. I wish I’d realized before or while reading it that that was the premise of this book. The tale stirred distant memories, but I thought it an old Aesop’s tale maybe. Retelling Potter is better. Jemima was foolish and had to be rescued. Willems’ heroine can save herself. Not only that, she can manipulate the situation from the beginning. Women and tricksters win! Illustrated to remind audiences (mostly the parents who will understand the reference while the kids, I’m almost sure, will not) of silent films, this tells a common story, a fox and a mother goose meet by chance the fox invites the duck back to his home for supper. The audience of the film within the book—a flock of young goslings whom I assumed from the get-go were the geese’s children—yell at the screen that what the characters are doing is not a good idea, really, really not a good idea, don’t do it! In a twist both in the age-old story and my imagination and understanding, the duck throws the fox as the last ingredient into his own stew, and the chicks, it is revealed, were warning him not her of the danger. I enjoyed the surprise, I enjoyed the twist, I enjoy it all more that I realize its inspiration.

****

The Pigeon Loves Things That Go! by Mo Willems. Hyperion, 2005.

This book starts out simply enough, listing a few basic modes of transportation: a bus, a train, an airplane, objects that seem to catch the interest of many young boys. Following these is a twist. “A hot dog? What is that doing here?” The duckling explains that a hot dog can go too—right down into his stomach. It works as a board book, meant to have a simplistic “plot” and a few pages, but I don’t think it would work as a hardcover, where I expect a little more. This is a book for the very young—and the parents tired of reading books that are solely lists and in need of a good laugh; call it a variation on a theme.

****

An Elephant and Piggie Book: A Big Guy Took My Ball! by Mo Willems. Disney-Hyperion, 2013.

Elephant Gerald and his best friend Piggie are back, and a big guy has taken Piggie’s ball. Elephant Gerald is big too. He’s going to get the ball back for Piggie. But the big guy is very, very BIG, and he says it’s his ball. Gerald returns empty-handed, but he’s soon followed by the big guy, but like many other side characters in The Elephant and Piggie books, he seeks to share Gerald and Piggie’s friendship, and whale ball is invented. Elephant and Piggie stories are often heartwarming and always funny. Best friends like Elephant and Piggie are hard to find—in real life or fiction.

Elephant Gerald feels excluded because he’s not a pig and feels he can’t celebrate with his friend. Gerald’s sadness makes Piggie sad too, but Happy Pig Day isn’t just for pigs. This book shows kids how exclusion feels and reminds them to include everyone—a common theme in The Elephant and Piggie books.

***

These reviews are not endorsed by any of the authors or publishers or anyone else involved in the making of these books. They are independent, honest reviews by a reader.